My idea of a Norwegian was always some cheerless Social Democrat in a knit sweater whose greatest joy in life was comparing the price of beer in Prague (cheap) to the price of beer in Krakow (even cheaper). Then I read the just-released new edition of Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground, a cult classic that first appeared in 1998.

Dude. No, seriously. Du-hu-huuude! All I can say is that Norway fuckiiin’ rocks!

Lords of Chaos chronicles the rise of Black Metal, Norway’s extremist contribution to the underground metal scene in the late 80s and early 90s. What made Black Metal so exceptional wasn’t just the speed and thrash of the music, the violence of the lyrics or the amount of corpse-paint that its death-obsessed members wore, but rather the number of real corpses and smoldering churches that the movement left behind.

The rise of the Black Metal movement in Norway is a case of humorless dirtheads taking a joke way too seriously. The joke was Satanic rock, which Lords of Chaos skillfully traces from its early origins in Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Coven (who transformed from performing black masses on stage to perpetrating the weepy hippie hit “One Tin Soldier”) to metal’s second big wave in the early 80s and the rise of kitsch Satan-rockers Venom. To our modern eyes, Venom looks the spitting image of Spinal Tap during their Smell the Glove phase, but to dirtheads who didn’t know any better, Venom was the long-sought embodiment of evil. It was from the Venom branch of evil-metal that all of metal’s more violent, “evil” forms descended, including Black Metal.

The point of Satanic rock was to scare the Normals while fucking with the minds of its pimple-faced, predominantly male (nerdoid) audience, who needed to create a counter-world, with counter-morals and counter-aesthetics, to empower the nerdoids against the cooler, more successful jocks. But metal had its rivals for the hopelessly angry nerdoid: punk, hardcore and metal’s own competing mutations. The competition forced metal’s leading edge to metamorphose into harder, faster and more violent forms, reaching its apex with the rise of Death Metal in the mid-80s. Death Metal was as violent, Satanic and musically inaccessible as metal could go, or so it seemed.

And here is where Norway, the comic straight-man character in this dumb, bloody saga, comes in. Norway is not only a completely humorless society (it banned Monty Python’s The Life of Brian for being too offensive, leading to ads in rival Sweden boasting that the movie was “so funny it was banned in Norway!”), but worse, a deeply oppressive society, in a recognizably bland, caring, pious, Social Democratic way. Which raises an interesting question: Do boredom and blandness “count” as real suffering, and if so, do they justify murder the way other forms of oppression make murder seem a likely, even understandable response? The Black Metalists of Norway think so.

The humor and empty boasts inherent in Death Metal were lost on Norway’s youth. They took Death Metal literally, and quickly discovered that it wasn’t “evil” or “authentic” enough. There were too many “poseurs.” And more important, too few genuine corpses for a scene that claimed to be so obsessed with death and violence. So Black Metal offered up one of its own as its first sacrificial corpse: the lead singer of Mayhem, who ingeniously had changed his name to “Dead,” offed himself with a shotgun. His friend and lead guitarist, Euronymous, discovered Dead’s brains splattered all over their apartment. So the first thing Euronymous does is run down to the village store to buy film, run back, snap a whole bunch of photos of Dead’s corpse, boast to all his friends about it, then call the cops. Now that is fuckin’ cool, dude.

You’ve really got to hand it to the Norse for keeping it real. I for one will be scratching them off the “Eurofag” list.

Euronymous eventually got offed himself by a rival Black Metaler, the surprisingly interesting neo-Nazi Varg Vikernes of Burzum, in large part because Varg thought Euronymous wasn’t “evil” enough. Vikernes’ own account of how he killed Euronymous, chasing him around an apartment building knifing him while the Black Metal victim screamed for help, is truly one of the great slapstick moments in murder history: “I hit him directly into his skull and his eyes went boing! and he was dead.” (I particularly like Varg’s Looney Tunes “boing!”)

Varg Vikernes cheerfully recounts how he murdered Euronymous

The book, particularly the first half, is often laugh-out-loud funny, in a metal sort of way. For one thing, Black Metalists are incredibly pedantic–as laughably pedantic as the worst jerks you knew in the college rock/punk/hardcore scene, and pedantic about the very same stupid things: who is more “genuine,” “authentic,” “extreme,” “on-the-edge” and in metal’s case, “evil.” It’s almost painful to read about the various figures’ internecine pedantry wars because they’re so similar to battles that were/are waged by pedants in the “alternative” subculture, which had always considered itself far superior to “lowly” metalhead culture.

And frankly, who’s to say that metalheads were lower or lamer than punks? One thing that’s hard to argue with the Black Metalists about is why many of them chose metal over punk: For them, punk copped out. Punk started off going for the throat of Normal Society, but in the game of chicken it didn’t have the nerve to go all the way, snagglepussing safely leftward or detouring into kitsch just when it had to lay its last cards on the table. Punk copped out almost at its inception, with The Clash quickly abandoning “White Riot” for pastafarian hippie politics, or the Sex Pistols devolving overnight from terrifying chaos to self-parody, a depressing degradation chronicled in The Great Rock ’N’ Roll Swindle.

The Black Metalists understood this copout quite consciously, opposed it (as they opposed Death Metal’s cringe in the face of real extremism) and therefore pushed their war with the Normals to its logical conclusion: They went for paganism, National- Socialism, church-torching and murder.

And why not go all the way for murder and arson, considering what the “consequences” of murder are in Northern Europe. Oo, a Northern European jail. Oo, I’m so scared! The sentences, when they’re even given out, are laughably light, while the jail conditions were described as a “holiday” by one of the victims’ mothers, or “time flies when you’re having fun” by one of the perps.

One lesson of Lords of Chaos is that it pays to murder in Northern Europe. Literally. Going to prison there is like getting comped at a Comfort Inn. You can’t possibly get locked away for long, and even if they give you 10 or 20 years–and that’s if you’re lucky–you can still get off on weekends for unaccompanied home visits, enough time to participate in another murder. Prisons there are so comfy that even the metalists complained about getting treated too well. As Varg Vikernes sneered, “It’s much too nice here. It’s completely ridiculous. I asked the police to throw me in a real dungeon, and also encouraged them to use violence.” Naturally, they didn’t.

Which got me thinking: If and when my own fledgling writing career dives for good, I know what I’m going to do. Put on some corpse paint, get myself an axe, go on a Scandinavian murder spree, then call the cops and demand that they jail me in the nearest Comfort Inn for life.

Where as the nerdoids in Lords of Chaos were vainly trying to recapture the lost, centuries-old glory of their Viking ancestors in a diminished modern Norway, uber-nerdoids Richard Perle and David Frum seem hell bent on destroying contemporary America’s glorious imperial war machine right at the very peak of its power. Their plan for leading America, lemming-like, over the cliff of self-destruction is laid out in their sparsely-worded manifesto, An End to Evil. The title alone shows how very Black Metal these grown-up war nerds are.

Let me just say here that I had always thought that draft-dodgers like Perle (who snagglepussed from the Vietnam War, exit stage left) and Frum (who, as a Canadian, was born a draft-dodger) were just your run-of-the-mill corporate fags, but after reading An End to Evil…dude. No seriously, du-hu-hude. Dude, I’m telling you, these chickenhawks fuckiiiiiiiiiin’ rock!

Seriously. They rock as hard as Burzum and Mayhem. The proof? First, both the Black Metalists and the Republican authors are obsessed with evil, as the title alone shows. Indeed, Frum is the author of the famous “axis of evil” line that has crippled Bush’s room for diplomatic maneuver. And Frum, like the metalists, got in trouble for boasting about how he’d made that line up–the same way that all the Black Metalists eventually got jailed for boasting about their murders. For their boasts, Frum got fired while the Black Metalists got rooms at the Comfort Inn. Gnarly.

Then there’s Richard Perle, who, like Dead or Euronymous, has his own infamous Black Metal nom de roque: The Prince of Darkness. Arrrggghhh! Launch fireworks and pyrotechnics from front of stage, set off explosions, lower giant skull as The Prince of Darkness and David “Axis of Evil” Frum take to the stage in their End to Evil monsters of hardline ideology tour!

Richard Perle, “Prince of Darkness”

The similarities don’t stop there. Whereas Vikernes and other Black Metalists saw heathen Norway in a life-or-death struggle for existence with the Semitic tribes’ Judeo-Christianity, Perle and Frum see Judeo-Christian America under threat from Islam. And both have the same solution: War, dude!

To be fair, Vikernes and another Black Metalist murderer, Hendrik Mobus, come off as far more interesting, intellectual and complex with their second-rate Nietzschean ideas mixed up with D&D mythology, whereas Perle and Frum’s war manifesto is surprisingly dull and sparse. Indeed, on each page the words are spaced so far apart you could drive a fertilizer-packed white van between each line. I read it in one sitting and came away with only one memorable line, in which they disparagingly called Belgium “France’s pilot fish.” On the other hand, Perle and Frum have used their influence over Bush to rack up a far, far higher corpse-count than the hapless Norwegian dirtheads, so they more than make up for their lack of aesthetic flair or stylized corpse paint with genuine blood on their hands.

Indeed, every sad word of An End to Evil oozes Perle’s and Frum’s pained, wasted 60s youths: wasted in yellow sheet stains, wasted studying maps color-coded with spheres-of-influence, wasted memorizing German armaments, and college years wasted playing Risk in their dorms while the socially successful hippies frolicked and fucked all around them. Perle and Frum will never forgive America for this humiliation and therefore they want to egg it on to its suicide by prodding it into a multi-front apocalyptic world war.

Their Black Metal plan is simple: Push North Korea to the brink and China right along with it; set the path for war against Iran; foment a Shiite independence movement in oil-rich eastern Saudi Arabia; kick Russia out of the G-8; invade Syria and Lebanon, while pushing Israel to turn the heat up even further on the Palestinians; and lastly, openly declare our hostility to the European Union, even if it means making enemies of France and Germany.

This raises another interesting question: Should Black Metalists cut their hair and vote Bush-Cheney ’04? Dude, I think the answer’s pretty fuckin’ obvious. In fact, thanks to these guys, America has become the world’s first Black Metal Nation.

90 Comments

As a lifelong Black Metal headbanger (got introduced to the stuff in Kindergarten by my older brother) I gotta say that your analysis vis a vis punk is pretty spot on. Punk turned into a parody of itself almost as quickly as it hit the ‘mainstream’. Black Metal has always been about the ‘other’. You can see it in the fuckin interviews. It’s like pulling teeth trying to get these guys to talk. It looks like they have learned their lessons from the old school days when boasting got your ass landed in prison. The only oldschoolers still around (Immortal etc.) never opened their fuckin mouths back in the 90’s and managed to stay above all of the bullshit. What was my point? Fuck, I guess I am drunk again.

DrunktankDan, Probably, like few artists out there nowadays, they think everything that they have to say is to be found right there on their work (and in this case, also their deeds!).

6. pmx? | July 23rd, 2011 at 6:10 pm

Post-Apocalypse now…Dont you get the sense that people all over the world are getting crazier each passing day, like start another world war-type crazy.

Shit, at least it would solve the unemployment debacle.

7. Jon Ezell | July 23rd, 2011 at 6:46 pm

I was a teenager growing up on metal and punk zines when the Mayhem stuff happened. In the Death Metal community Black Metal was not taken very seriously, and this was considered the prime example. LaVeyan Satanism was the dominant philosophical school in DM, and BM was more interested in throwing goats heads at fans and maybe later about vikings.

One of the bands you didn’t mention, but which were hugely influential on Mayhem and the Deathlike Silence / Helvete Records scene in the early days was Bathory (this bridges the gap between Venom and Norwegian BM). Bathory was a fucking awesome one-man band that made incredibly raw and ferocious records (for their time) out of Sweden. Quorthon, the guy behind it, had a really good sense of humor (if you don’t believe me, take a look at the album cover for “Under the Sign of the Black Mark”). I read an interview with him around 1995 where he was talked about being really weirded out when the young “Norwegian Satanic Mafia” (read: some of the dorks from Mayhem and maybe Emperor) tried to write him letters requesting an “alliance” at first, and then he was just puzzled when he started receiving threatening letters after no response.

I briefly put out a punk and metal zine and worked on a metal radio show in the mid-90s and got a lot of really really bad demos and albums from enterprising BM labels, who were capitalizing (somewhat successfully) on the Mayhem and church-burning notoriety, pimping really lame knockoffs and crappy one-off BM projects (same thing that happened with grunge bands). Like most extreme music fanatics, I loved to hear evil-sounding shit, but most of this stuff just sounded like the sonic equivalent of a sheet ghost. Left-winger metal heads are used to putting up with right-wing crap from bands that they liked (LaVey ripped off Ragnar Redbeard and Ayn Rand the most, after all). But the Nazi imagery was just idiotic.

As I matured, I came to appreciate the sheer immaturity of early Norwegian BM a little bit more. There’s something really fucking charming about Mayhem’s Deathcrush or the second Emperor demo, with it’s ludicrous synth lines and legitimately heavy, competent song writing. I don’t really have anything goofy to say about Immortal that isn’t obvious from the first second that you look at them, but as the drunk commenter mentioned, they were the real deal back then (maybe??), their lyrics are mostly nature poetry about icebergs, and musically they are fucking awesome.

I remember when I heard the news yesterday about the attacks on the Labor Party / Norway, before an announcement of whodunit, and my first thoughts were that it was some right wing psychopath who probably listened to metal and took it way too seriously.

p.s. If you want to see something really fucked, check out some Manowar tour DVDs and see the rabid the fans are in the FYR or FSU countries for that low-fantasy nationalist hero-metal. HAIL AND KILL!

8. John Drinkwater | July 23rd, 2011 at 7:29 pm

“gotta be careful with those comments, drinkwater”

Jesus Christ, I was just kidding around…

9. Esn | July 23rd, 2011 at 10:03 pm

No wonder Chinese emperors used to hire people to record which songs the peasants were listening to.

If violent music becomes popular… double your guard, because something’s going to happen sooner or later.

10. helplesscase | July 24th, 2011 at 12:57 am

@6: God, I hope so.

11. Jim Buck | July 24th, 2011 at 5:01 am

What a paraplegically lame article! Miguel Serrano wouldn’t be coming in his pants.

12. Henry | July 24th, 2011 at 7:01 am

The Breivik guy was more into vocal trance, of all things. And templar knights instead of vikings. Speaking of Norwegian fascists, I’d love a Dolan story on Knut Hamsun.

13. MikeJake | July 24th, 2011 at 7:52 am

Norwegian black metallers are, by and large, total hicks. It’s hard to think of them in hillbilly terms because they’re so tall and Aryan looking, but look at Varg and try and tell me that he wouldn’t fit in if he lived in rural Tennessee.

14. Take it! | July 24th, 2011 at 8:36 am

Those Black Metal guys were and are a bunch of Asperger-kids. As said in the article, they didn’t get the joke. If it wasn’t because they all ruined the great atmosphere at the concerts and that they are in some nut-cases dangerous, they would all be a laughing-stock at face-value. You now just laugh at them behind their backs. This is the way satanists and republicans are alike – mongoloids that really are laughable but since they are really dangerous for the world, the laugh really gets stuck somewhere. The difference is though that the Black Metal evolved from a solid good musical background. Republicans have nothing honourable behind them.

15. swr | July 24th, 2011 at 8:44 am

It’s hard to think of them in hillbilly terms because they’re so tall and Aryan looking

Minor quibble:

Aren’t most hillbillies Scots Irish and, therefore, identical in appearance to most Norwegians?

Or is there some difference between various types of melanin deprived northern Europeans I’m not aware of?

16. swr | July 24th, 2011 at 8:47 am

I’ve always found something just a little creepy about the American idealization of all things Nordic.

They’re three little hick countries in the middle of nowhere that have been outside the mainstream of European history ever since Peter the Great destroyed Sweden as a great power.

I am Norwegian. Completely humorless, bland, pious that is. Come on, what are you Mark, a tea-party twit? We have free abortion and gays and lesbians can marry. Good cooperation between unions and industry owners. Thought I have read something about these things in your forum, is it what you call oppression?

18. Norsky | July 24th, 2011 at 11:24 am

Another thing, Mark. I read your article some years ago and found it funny. But you choose to put it on top of your forum right after we have lost almost 100 youths, in a nation of only 5 mill. people. Very considerate! Make fun of us. Your Anglo-American supremacy beliefs are sickening. What are you to make jokes about others, with your GOP/democrate/tea-party clowns unable to agree on as much as a budget. I so much regret that I actually made a contribution to your blog.

Now, excuse me while I drown my sorrows in a herring milkshake with a side of gravlax.

19. Cernunnos | July 24th, 2011 at 11:57 am

I realize this article is old, but it would have been nice to have some kind of postscript about the fact that the author of Lords of Chaos is himself a creepy right-wing crypto-nazi behind the industrial project Blood Axis. In fact, it would be rather interesting to have an expose on the Nazi and pro-pedophilia creeps who populate the industrial, noise, power electronics, and neo-folk scenes.

Black metal is an easy target the Nazi thing isn’t really a huge deal in that scene anymore and was blown way out of proportion by the media and books like Lords of Chaos, which goes out of the way to make the black metal movement into some kind of Gotterdamerung with tenuous links to “The Wild Hunt” and the Asatru movement. You can really tell it’s trying too hard on the giant chapter dedicated to Varg, Qisling, Nazis, and UFOs.

According to a Norwegian law maximum life sentence penalty is 21 years, but if perpetrator, who has committed a capital crime, is considered to be a threat to society one can be sentenced to an excretion for the rest of one’s life after one has served the 21 year life imprisonment.

Which is nice, for who would voluntary turn down a 5 star Holiday Inn indulgence after only 21 years.

23. DrunktankDan | July 24th, 2011 at 1:16 pm

Norsky, Sorry bud but that countries don’t earn cultural reputations for no reason. If I had nickel for every time somebody thought I was retarded due to a certain dumbfuck’s foreign policy (lookin at you Dubya) and or their previous experience with a certain dumbfuck generation (shoutout to all my boomers!) I could probably buy a pretty good chunk of coke. What’s the goin rate in Norway? Around here in coastal California it’s 120 to 160 an eightball.

24. DrunktankDan | July 24th, 2011 at 1:19 pm

Oh, and the quality depends on how well you speak Spanish.

25. Muckraker | July 24th, 2011 at 2:44 pm

Interesting article, I hope the exile actually does some work on Breivik because he’s got plenty connections to the Tea Party Right in Europe as well as Objectivists.

@17&18 I hope you were going for trolling points here, because you nailed “completely humorless, bland and pious” quite well (add “ridiculous kneejerk nationalist” to the mix also.)

28. Timmy | July 24th, 2011 at 5:07 pm

For the guy who asked how Norwegians were different than Scots Irish, I would say many Norwegians have a distintively large Norwegian forehead.

29. Henry | July 24th, 2011 at 5:30 pm

Hey Norsky, chill out! You’re almost sounding like a German or something. Anyway, sorry about that Breivik guy. You’re not alone. Those kind of guys are popping up like mushrooms throughout Northern and Central Europe right now. Fortunately, they just mostly whine on their little net forums. Better prepare for worse, though.

-Your Nordic neighbor

30. Victorvalley Villain | July 24th, 2011 at 8:25 pm

“Good cooperation between unions and industry owners.”

Wait, this ‘class snuggle’ is a good thing?

31. . | July 24th, 2011 at 9:01 pm

@MikeJake, and what makes you anything other than a hick?

32. Norsky | July 24th, 2011 at 9:39 pm

Thank you all guys. This is a 9/11 moment for Norway. It sure is heartwarming to get your support.

33. BCS | July 24th, 2011 at 11:33 pm

If only Norway had some oil to steal. Then it could be sure of American, uh, ‘support’. Sorry for your loss Norsky.

34. DrunktankDan | July 25th, 2011 at 2:38 am

Norsky, Hang tough bud. . .even dumb drunk hicks out in America(like myself) are feeling for your loss. I wish you and your homeland the best. Look at the bright side though. . .at least it wasn’t some pathetic ragheads that your leaders can use in order to justify some fuckass-retarded resource conflicts in the arab world. When I first heard about the bombing I thought “Aw shit, another couple of Ali Baba’s started some shit they couldn’t finish”. I hate to say it, but I was mildly relieved to learn that it was a Norwegian national. Takes a little of pressure off of the teeny tiny minority of refugee muslims you guys have to deal with. That being said, this whole thing must be really fucking jarring. Especially since he was “one of your own” Sorry, and we are giving a shit about you here in America (no sarcasm) DrunktankDan

35. Eurotrash | July 25th, 2011 at 6:07 am

@29 Contempt for the whiners on the net, contempt for those brave few who act upon their convictions… what’s a Justiciar Knight Commander to do 🙁

And then some Norwegian turbo-lesbian comes out and claims this is their 9/11. Truth be told, 9/11 was funnier.

This touched on something that really needs deeper analysis — the correlation between fantasy nerds and metal (whether heavy, black, death, whatever). It’s not just the escapist aspect but also the technical — metalheads often insist on metal’s superiority because of the intricate guitar noodling and fantasy nerds often insist Robert Jordan and Terry Goodkind write good books because there are so many pages.

As a metalhead I will tell you that I am not a fantasy nerd, nor are the more technical genres full of a lot of fantasy nerd type of lyrics. You’d be better off looking toward power metal and folk metal.

40. Klaus | July 25th, 2011 at 1:10 pm

Have to note that when it comes to posing as dead hard, no one beats exile authors. Are you going to assassinate any Wall Street CEOs soon-ish?

41. Yousif | July 25th, 2011 at 1:40 pm

Black Metal Owns

42. gary | July 25th, 2011 at 2:09 pm

making fun of a mass murder…you guys are too cool…to bad it wasn’t someone you loved…(i know you are all too cool to love anyone or anything)..now that would be funny…my condolences to norway

“black metal movement into some kind of Gotterdamerung with tenuous links to “The Wild Hunt” and the Asatru movement.”

.. but … black metal movement links to “The Wild Hunt” and the Asatru movement ARE tenuous. And that’s bad enough, .. between tenacious at best .. without breaking through to my contention cernunnos stood model (as the dutch have/put it) for an art, craft and metier of breaking through rock and letting thus minted coin of the realm run into the ground … putting death to live as it were. Been saying this since the early nineties folks.

… and tendentious at next to worst (Breivik’s good gamer shot, fallujah, gaza, tripoli), namely abstractsolooting the life and death aspects, not lifting a finger but leveraging the mental pic into the eat here real no low me tangere realms of pure Hernewax Hirnwix

44. CAW | July 25th, 2011 at 3:09 pm

Varg Vikernes himself has a few issues with the Moynihan book, which he writes about on his official home page. While he comes across as whiny, he nonetheless makes a plausible case that Moynihan made a sloppy journalistic job, where he failed to connect to the principal actors, get them to open up to him and tell their part of the story.

I can’t believe you guys aren’t aware of the Russian black metal scene, which is an offshoot of the Eastern European National Socialist Black Metal scene. Pretty much every neo-nazi kid in Russia is in a black metal band these days; it’s the new gabber.

46. Destro | July 25th, 2011 at 5:39 pm

The joke’s on all of those Black Metalist Nords because Satan is not into metal at all. Lucifer would introduce himself as a man of wealth and taste who is into dance music and would rather be at Studio 54 in its glory hole days and getting babes high on cocaine and getting laid while wearing the most expensive stylish clothing. That is what it means to be Satanic! Satan laughs at these berdy losers who play music while dressing like a “Lord of the Rings” extra.

47. Ashcroft | July 25th, 2011 at 5:59 pm

#43: .. but … black metal movement links to “The Wild Hunt” and the Asatru movement ARE tenuous. And that’s bad enough, .. between tenacious at best .. without breaking through to my contention cernunnos stood model (as the dutch have/put it) for an art, craft and metier of breaking through rock and letting thus minted coin of the realm run into the ground … putting death to live as it were. Been saying this since the early nineties folks.

… and tendentious at next to worst (Breivik’s good gamer shot, fallujah, gaza, tripoli), namely abstractsolooting the life and death aspects, not lifting a finger but leveraging the mental pic into the eat here real no low me tangere realms of pure Hernewax Hirnwix”

You’ve been saying this since the early 90s? There’s a career in spam emailing for you yet.

48. Cernunnos | July 25th, 2011 at 8:16 pm

@ Piet

I’m having some trouble understanding you, but I’m not sure what you’re disagreeing with me about. I was saying that the Michael Moynihan’s scholarship is more or less right wing propaganda trying to validate the teenage nihilism of early 90s black metal as some kind of serious traditionalist uprising, which is absolutely laughable.

49. Anathame | July 25th, 2011 at 9:45 pm

Well Norway is off the Christmas card list.

50. MikeJake | July 26th, 2011 at 7:27 am

Varg speaks:

” He is a Christian too. Now, in a sense that does make sense, but why does it make sense? The Jews created Christianity as a religion for non-Jews to follow, so that they too would become worshippers of their Hebrew false “God”, so that the unruly Pagan Europeans would become servants and a powerful tool for the Jews. Whether the Jews created Islam too, or whether they just saw an opportunity coming when it was created is not known, but we do know that the Jews have always promoted conflict between these two religions – and indeed they still do. When the Christians grow too strong the Jews support the Muslims to weaken the Christians. When the Muslims grow too strong the Jews support the Christians to weaken the Muslims. They often support both sides too, if both sides are too strong, and they often do in secret. Christians then kill Muslims, and vice versa, whilst the Jews laugh safely in the background, profiting from it all.”

now wait, i just found a swede with a halfway decent use of heavy metal machinery (literal version) and commented (there, and on topic for here too) on their first vid. see Giovannitrading at youtube

they want to haul a scottish dust which already proved commercially viable (stunning produce for sure, Findhorn like proportions) throughout the UK (a byproduct of large quarry operations somebody had the smarts to soup up a compost product with) all the way to desert regions.

i sorta cussed them out for it. It’s not as if the middle east hasn’t got any composting suitable rock.

i’m gonna check that varg out for sure. thanks.

54. Vurt | July 26th, 2011 at 4:55 pm

If you think that’s hardcore, checkout Swedish biker gangs.

55. the other Jon | July 26th, 2011 at 9:12 pm

@MikeJake

That article truly goes beyond parody. Yes, everything goes according to the Jews’ (because apparently they are a monolithic entity, in which none of the constituent individuals have any personal autonomy whatsoever) devious plan. This kind of thinking reminds me of an interview from a few years ago with George Meyer, a former writer and producer for The Simpsons (he did “Homer the Heretic,” among others), who had this to say on the topic of paranoia and delusional thinking:

“To me, a mark of maturity is realizing that nobody runs the world. Fat-cat politicians and secret conspiracies don’t control our lives. In reality, the world is much more complex than that. The people who seem to have a lock on power get swept out in a couple of years. So it’s naïve to keep swinging at the same targets over and over. It took me a long time to realize, but most of the shackles that I flailed against were just illusory.”

@19 …or how Michael Moynihan translated Julius Evola’s “Men Among the Ruins” because there either wasn’t an English translation or he didn’t like the existing one. Who do you want to bring up? Boyd Rice, Death in June, Laibach when there still was a Yugoslavia and half the band wasn’t strung out on smack? I know about the Naziphilia in this sort of music, but where does pedophilia come in?

57. bg | July 27th, 2011 at 8:00 am

In his book ‘2083: A European Declaration of Indepedence’, Andrew Berwick (AKA Anders Behring Breivik)wrote,”I hated Metal rock and I hate it even today…Goth girls and hard rock. I disliked both.”

58. anti hip hop coalition | July 27th, 2011 at 10:28 am

Breivik was a wigger, just like you Mark. You wanna see some real ugly fascist behavior, look at America’s horde of wigger jocks. Oh, but they’re ok ’cause they’re emulating black people- derp derp derp.

59. nmndm | July 27th, 2011 at 8:02 pm

I think your description of the Norwegian prisons isn’t very informed. Yes, they are significantly lighter on criminals, but they also have one of the lowest crime rates in the world. Now you might point at the recent shooting, but that guy is quite obviously bat shit crazy, and no threat of punishment can dissuade that kind of bat shit. Just thought I’d throw that out there.

60. Cernunnos | July 27th, 2011 at 10:30 pm

@ 56

I’m thinking of folks like Mikko Aspa (owner of Freak Animal records) and Peter Sotos, formerly of Whitehouse. The main Whitehouse guys themselves started much of those themes, but I never took it as more than provocation.

61. commentfag | July 28th, 2011 at 10:27 am

the other jon @55

exactly. if these shadowy elites are as all-powerful as they’re suggested to be, what with their supposed control of the media and the establishment, how come murdoch’s shit hit the fan in such fine style recently?

funny thing is that one of the explanations i’ve heard is that murdoch isn’t the real player and is in fact just a puppet himself. why mr conspiracy theorist, how convenient! it’s like the old pro-atheism argument: if you can’t see, hear, touch or measure it in any meaningful way then chances are it doesn’t exist.

people still hold on to this stuff though because it feeds their self-image and ego by allowing them to feel enlightened, or “illuminated” if you will, without having to exert the effort of applying their limited intellect to assessing the real complexities of the world.

the same could be said for anders fuckovich blaming what he sees as society’s big problems on a conspiracy of islamic feminists. if feminism is as psychically virulent and debilitating to society as he imagines then surely he would have been more effective by promoting women’s rights in the muslim world, maybe by spoofing some burqa-ripping sex blog under a digital pseudonym, no massacre required. shit, he could have defeated the spread of islam to europe while eating a danish on his teabreak. what a dumb fag!

62. Norsky | July 28th, 2011 at 11:43 pm

@nmndm

Yes, we have a small prison population in Norway, and spend much effort into repatriation of ex-prisoners. But to Ames, world record holder in stereotypy, this is just one proof of how zoombie-like we are.

63. Mark "Hook Nose" Ames | July 28th, 2011 at 11:55 pm

Lords of Chaos was a bogus book. And Coven wasn’t an influence to metal. Stop being a dirty jap.

64. Cernunnos | July 29th, 2011 at 8:57 am

@ 63

Exactly. It also tries to link Robert Johnson and a slew of other influences that have nothing to do with extreme metal. But even it’s re-cap of the lineage of black metal itself is shoddy. It tries to boil it down to mainly three bands: Venom, Mercyful Fate, and Bathory, and while those are all important to mention, only Bathory deserved the full mini-chapter devoted to it, as it was one of the first bands playing a fully formed version of what is now called black metal. Venom and Mercyful Fate were speed/heavy metal bands whose occult image and “evil” atmosphere were a big influence on bands like Bathory, but neither were themselves black metal. Venom always gets more credit than is due just because their sophomore album provided the genre with its name, but leaving it at just those three is completely unsatisfactory. At the least he could have given an extra mini-chapter to Tom Fischer’s Hellhammer and Celtic Frost, especially the former band.

65. Erik | July 29th, 2011 at 9:19 am

Lords of Chaos is an awful book on the subject since it is written for shock, is full of exaggeration and skews the subject. When you take the time to read it all from all the different sources, it’s a lot less lurid and interesting. Making fun of black metal isn’t exactly difficult, especially since it’s been done to death, by everyone, for the last 15 years. So this editorial was neither funny, accurate nor original.

That stuff would only fly in a laid-back wealthy country like Norway. Evil rich kidz!

But in this thread, I did lol @ the metal historians, the actual fans of Burzum’s music, and Mark Ames posting about a dated book (released by Feral House) written by a sociopathic racist — and failing to mention any of it.

70. Damn! | August 9th, 2011 at 12:56 pm

Norway should be colonized by the Swedes again. They really don’t have anything to add to the world as a sovereign entity.

71. Petkov | August 18th, 2011 at 3:50 pm

Leave it to Mark to find several faults and put down one of the BEST countries in the world to live in. So predictable.

72. brian crain | August 22nd, 2011 at 1:22 pm

are people outside of black metal still going on about something that went down in 1993! he served his time. move on.

73. Norsky | August 23rd, 2011 at 12:52 am

@72

This is not about black metal. Mark reposted it on July 23, the day after the attack on Utoya killing 77 people. The context is Norway. Humorless, oppressed, bland, pious, etc., etc.

74. Norwegian | November 12th, 2011 at 7:23 am

The “problem” with Norway is that we have a welfare state that works pretty well, it’s not perfect but it works. The flip side of it is that most people will stay in school or higher education for most part of their youth and will also come back to various state institutions throughout their life. Some people will live on welfare and be dependent on the state their whole life.

All personal problems or conflicts in society (real or imaginary) therefore tend to be projected on the state (school, the welfare system) and progressive ideas connected with social democracy (social workers, teachers). In other societies people tend to project their anger on capitalism, the rich or their bosses.

Most people tend to turn social democrat when they start to work and experience that capitalism and bosses are much worse than the state and liberal and social democrat politicians.

75. COCKSON | February 10th, 2012 at 3:22 pm

@48 *Moynihan* is absolutely laughable. A good friend of Jim Goad, too.

76. Kyle | March 11th, 2012 at 10:09 pm

Well Black Metal was the last of the metal genres that I got into (I listen to nearly all metal except for this Metalcore/Nu Metal BS). I think Black Metal like Metalcore, Hair metal, Nu metal all this trendy metal seems to lose a musical component. Out of all the sub-genres listed above I’d say Black Metal does have the most potential which is why I actually listen to some of it. It does sadden me to see shit heads fuck a beautiful genre up with their as you said immature behavior. Luckily it would seem the fad is somewhat fading out although, I live in America where it never really flew off so I guess I wouldn’t know. That of course means you’ll have less refurbished garbage coming out, I guess we will have to wait and see where this genre goes I hope it takes a more open/liberal stance like many other metal genres.

There’s actually some pretty good North American black metal nowadays. Sure, it never took off as an insular cultural thing like it did in Norway and Sweden, but America has just as many, if not more, prominent black metal bands as most other black metal-producing countries throughout Europe.

Hey Mark. You should totally check out one of Varg’s newish albums, “Fallen.” There’s one track in which he totally sounds like Beavis.’

“Ahhhhhhhheheheheheh jeg faller… ahhhhhhhhheheheheheheh jeg faller”

80. COCKSON | July 5th, 2012 at 9:22 pm

@68 Oh yeah, man, those neocons aren’t at best totally ambivalent about Christianity, man. And that’s not what he wrote, dude, but like, okay bro that’s just your opinion man.

Anyway, where the fuck is UNCLE DOLAN?

81. COCKSON | July 5th, 2012 at 9:30 pm

@69 Yeah, interesting to me that Mark doesn’t make fun of Moynihan. Both are friends with Dugin (:D, Mark), so maybe Moynihan and Amesyames are also friends. That’s how it works.

Mmm I’m already smarting.

82. COCKSON | July 5th, 2012 at 9:33 pm

Mark, do you think gumshoe Polack missed your old school fascist connections? Always wondered about that.

83. Misha Verbitsky | July 6th, 2012 at 9:37 pm

hey gavin mcinnis here, still trolling after all these years, still thinking i’m gonna find that magic bombshell on you because, well, that’s what happens when you’re a white supremacist fashionista! edgy, I know

like unkle dolan and limonov about equally but life is more like unkle dolan’s unfortunately

::pinches his gut on both sides and repeatedly wags it up and down with two hands::

UNKLEA DOLAN UNKLEA DOLAN PLS COME BACK I SUMMON YOO PLS I HAVE CHEESY POOFS AND OTHER FRIED FOODS AND NOSE BONDAGE PORN FOR YOU TO YANK OFF TO PLS COME BACK UKLEA DOLAN

88. Dalie | November 28th, 2012 at 4:15 pm

Norwegian black metal have a great inluence of its surroundings, the free access to nature everywhere, the outdoor culture, the gloomy weather, the snow,the old mythology and this all gathered resulted in such excelence (for who likes it of course). Of course that is inspiring. That transformed “common” black/thrash in a storm of melancholic/cold tunes with eerie, dark lyrics. BUT VERY IMPORTANT fact, as important as the others i said, or even more, is the WELFARE state, the WEALTH, RICHNESS, and the freedom and peace, and it determined and permited its existence in the actual forms. Its very easy to start playing, to get on a band, to buy instruments, to rent studio, to record a tape or a cd, to go on tour, to buy bulletbelts, spikes and all. Every single tatooed,long haired young men, is supported by the government and parents. Nobody has to leave college to go work. College is free, and the young black metallers have always wonderful lives. So they can dedicate a lot of time to write, play, rehearse and that. Even so, despite some few bands, you could not make a sustentable living out of black metal, but in these countries like Norway, is so easy to make a life out of a part time job, and its easy to quit and get another job soon. You dont have to worry much about the bills. You will be able to pay them and focus in your band meanwhile. In many other countries, youngsters who want to have bands, specially black metal bands, have more difficulties ahead. Work schedules, sometimes 2 jobs to pay the bills, sometimes the young man has to work to pay college (college is not free in many countries),so less time and money to rent studios, rehearsal rooms etc. Black metal from Norway is for me, my favourite, but it would ever never be what it is if Norway economy was like Greek, Italien or Portuguese. It would be barely a few bands and a few cds/tapes. We have to be grateful to nordic countries economy for the existence of black metal too. Many black metal bands or most, would not exist if Norway had a bad economy.

89. KING | May 18th, 2013 at 6:24 am

just send this white norwegian artist to me..

ill show him what violence is …

90. Jerszy | December 11th, 2013 at 8:21 pm

Sorry to shove a tampon up your ass, but the only true no poser nbm-ers are the ones who kill themselves right after their first performance. Anything else is nothin mor thank kiss

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